Several processes and relevant automatic apparatuses for rapidly cooking, under an increased pressure, doses of alimentary "pasta", in particular noodles and the like, which processes are capable of enabling doses of "pasta" cooked and ready-to-eat to be distributed at short time intervals, are already known.
In general, the processes known from the prior art to rapidly cook these alimentary "pastas" substantially envision an initial pre-cooking in water for a time of 40-50 seconds inside a vertical-axis chamber under high pressure and at a high temperature and, soon after, an end cooking also for a few seconds time, at a lower temperature, in order to enable "pasta" to absorb the correct water amount.
At the end of the cooking step, the dose of "pasta" is separated from cooking water, and is transferred to trays or dishes to be eaten
Some of these processes end apparatuses for rapidly cooking alimentary "pastas" under an increased pressure are reported, e.g., in the following issued patents/published patent applications.
Namely, published International patent application WO 87/04910 relates to the fast cooking of filamentary alimentary "pastas", which is attained by carrying out the pre-cooking step of a metered amount of "pasta" inside a chamber installed inside a kettle, at a high-temperature (i.e., at 130.degree. C.-150.degree. C.) and under a pressure comprised within the range of from 4 to 6 bars. Water enters the pre-cooling chamber from the bottom thereof and after a 40 seconds time "pasta" becomes soft; said softened "pasta" is then sent to an end-cooking chamber and after about 40 seconds is discharged onto a tray, ready-to-eat. The apparatus adopts various contrivances to improve the operating conditions, to recover the heat contained in the waste water, and a feeder for raw "pasta" of carrousel or dial type, with a plurality of compartments each containing a dose of "pasta" to be cooked.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,937,135 and 3,877,344 relate to a same fast-cooking process, and differ from each other only because according to the second patent, a centrifugal separator is used to remove the excess of cooking water, whilst tile first one uses, for that purpose, a separator of a different type. Both said patents accomplish the cooking step inside a pressurized chamber, which is separated from the heated-water kettle, and is kept at a temperature higher than 100.degree. C.; pre-cooked "pasta" is transferred by the same water pressure to an end-cooking chamber from which excess water is removed from cooked "pasta" by means of a separator.
According to Italian patent application No. 65,711 A/83, a kettle is used which is at a temperature comprised within the range of from 120.degree. C. to 180.degree. C., and is equipped with a cooking chamber partially of cone-frustum shape fop the direct cooking of "pasta", with cooked "pasta" being discharged from the bottom; whereas Italian patent application No. 66,710 A/83 provides a pre-cooking chamber installed inside the interior of the kettle and a separate end-cooking chamber provided with a stirring fork to stir "pasta" during the end-cooking step; pre-cooked "pasta" is pushed into the interior of the end-cooking chamber by the same water pressure existing inside the pre-cooking chamber.
Furthermore, in Italian patent application No. 9470 A/85, the pre-cooking chamber is placed inside the kettle and the end-cooking chamber is connected with a heat exchanger to recover heat contained in cooking water.
Finally, also Italian patent No. 1,221,703 provides a pre-cooking chamber inside the interior of the kettle, and a conditioning chamber i.e., a chamber inside which the end-cooking of "pasta" takes place.
All these, as well as other apparatuses known from the prior art to rapidly cook alimentary "pastas" only partially solved the several problems one should solve in the practice in order to enable an automatic cycle for fast cooking alimentary "pastas" in particular noodles to be correctly exploited at a commercial level, simultaneously securing a rigorous constancy of the quality of the obtained product, also after a large number of operating cycles.
In fact, the total time required by such a type of cooking cycle should preferably be shorter than 1 minute; the pressurized chambers and kettles for hot water must have a capacity lower than 5 liters due to homologation reasons; the absorbed powers should be of not more than 4.5 kW in order to have energy costs compatible with the market of automatic dispensers, "pasta" should be cooked in a uniform way, and should remain uniform until it is actually dispensed; and furthermore the cooking apparatus must be reliable, i.e., it should not show drawbacks also after long operating times, and furthermore should not undergo jammings or stoppages during the step of loading of raw "pastas".